The@Village Inc

Two part-time staff members and a handfull of volunteers visit camp locations throughout the city and rather than simply dropping off needed items, staff and volunteers also spend time in camps to build trust and form relationships in order to better know and address the needs of each individual.

Here is one of their stories:

Someone recently gave us a tent and two brand new sleeping bags. A fairly ordinary occurance, you may be thinking to yourself, so why write about that? Because it was a miracle. That someone was a  ”sometimes” resident of tent city, when she was sober enough to make it back to there from the trail or whichever man’s apartment she had just been used and beaten in. She speant months on the street in Huntsville after being released to nowhere, with nothing and no one from Julia Tutweiler Prison for women after 17 long years. She was so into her addictions until the first week of September, and in a devestating cycle of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. We worked with her week after week, beating after beating… then a beating occurred that collapsed her lung. We tried to get her to go to the hospital. She refused, wandering the street, wasting at a more rapid rate than usual. She finally went to the hospital. They reinflated her lung and kept her a few days. Then out she came, refusing treatment and re-entered the same cycle. One evening at dusk as I was pulling out of camp for the day another female camper came running after my car screaming ” Stop! You gotta get to one of the other camps fast. Three men are trying to take her away”. One of our FPC volunteers was also on scene so we barrelled off to stop that action. When we approached her I could observe her color and respirations and knew that lung had recollapsed. She innitially refused treatment. We loaded her up and took her back to the relative safety of tent city and stayed with her until she agreed to an ambulance. That was her last night at tent city and on the street. After discharge from the hospital and with support from The Village and her friends at First Presbyterian Church, she chose to enter Breaking Free Women’s Program. We stopped by today to give her some love and some make-up. She said she had something to give us. It was that tent and those sleeping bags, which were immediately needed and put to use for a camper today. What a great gift she gave today. Not just the gear, but the reminder to me, and I hope to all of us, to never ever believe anyone or anything is hopeless. Thank you A.B. And congratulations on 60 days of sobriety!